With a background in economics and public policy, I've covered domestic and international energy issues since 1998. I'm the editor-in-chief for Public Utilities Fortnightly, which is a paid subscription-based magazine that was established in 1929. My column, which also appears in the CSMonitor, has twice been named Best Online Column by two different media organizations. Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein. Email: ken@silversteineditorial.com

Will Algae Biofuels Hit the Highway?

An Arizona-based algae technology company says it’s on to something big: harnessing the growth of algae at a commercial scale so that it can ultimately be used as a transportation fuel. “Heliae” broke ground Friday on its new plant. Now, all it needs is an abundance of sunshine, water and carbon dioxide.

But while the ingredients to make algae may be simple, it is still an open question as to whether current pilot facilities can attract private investors that will enable the industry to gear up. Beyond the financial concerns, environmental worries persist. It can involve taking carbon emissions from power plants to grow the algae before converting it to something that would run cars, trucks and airplanes.

In a phone interview, Heliae’s Chief Executive Dan Simon explained to this writer that the company’s ultimate goal is to produce transportation fuels. To get to that point, though, it will focus on near-term aims that are more attainable: chemicals, cosmetics and healthy foods. As it develops, the enterprise will then expand overseas and into the Asia Pacific region.

“We will never take our eyes off the transportation fuels,” says Simon. “But there are stepping stones to get us there. Production costs have to come down. Right now, the economics don’t work. It will be 5 to 10 years before all of this will affect the price at the pump.”

Simon continues, saying that “good science takes time” and that by first picking the “low hanging fruit” the company will drive revenues and efficiencies, and bring down production costs. Among the key goals the company is working towards: Ensuring that the process has a “positive energy impact,” meaning that it can’t take more energy to grow the algae than the amount of carbon dioxide that the algae would absorb.

Critics maintain that the recycling of carbon lends credence to the burning of fossil fuels and in the end, more carbon is emitted than is captured. The journal of Environmental Science and Technology, furthermore, looked two years ago at the life cycle of algae compared to other bio-fuels such as corn and switch-grass. It concluded that using conventional crops to create fuels will result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less water consumption than if algae is used to do the same thing.

The study also says that most of the carbon that is getting captured is coming from places other than power plants and oil refineries. That’s because there is not yet an effective way to bottle such releases from industrial sources.

Those findings, however, have been refuted by the Algae Biomass Association, which says that researchers have used outdated data that is tied to older production methods to draw their conclusions. To that end, the industry, which has kept its production processes proprietary, is now saying that it may be willing to share its newest information so that such students can better understand today’s technologies.

“If it cost you more energy to make it, then what is the point,” says Nick Donowitz, director of corporate development for Heliae. “Based on the work we’ve done, we are charging on a path toward an energy neutral or energy positive system.”

Algae, today, is a blip on the radar. But, tomorrow, it may become a full-scale blimp. According to Pike Research, it could be a 61 million barrels a year commodity with a market value of $1.3 billion by 2020. That’s a compound growth rate of 72 percent, it adds. To put that in context, 83 million barrels of oil are consumed each day around the world. Of that, the United States uses about 18 million a day.

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If you are a biologist you should know that biofuels are not dependent on petroleum in any way

Nature was producing biofuels for hundreds of millions of years with no petroleum input whatever, LONG before man OR petroleum came along.

Driving a vehicle down the road using a biofuel is no different in the Carbon Energy Exchange Cycle than riding a horse, or pulling a load with oxen. It is ultimately sunlight that is the origin of the energy—not fossil fuels.

ddugger posted an excellent comment about the limitations of biofuels with respect to scale of global fuel consumption, dependance on artificial NPK fertilizer.

What I bring in against his scepsis is the notion that the wasteful use of NPK fertilizer is true for landbased agriculture but less valid for algae farming. Algae are much better in utilizing fertilizers, by nature of the cultivation process in preferably recycling water systems the fertilizers are better kept at the farmsite; higher efficiency !

The example I advocate is anaerobic digestion for biogas generation combined with algae farming. Here organic waste is converted into energy and the nutrient rich residues also feed the algaesystems. Anaerobic digestion contibutes to GHG reduction by evading methane emissions, avoiding use of fossil fuel and the residual nutrients and CO2 are better available for algaefarming.

The approach results in closing a local cycle for carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, which is driven by sunlight. the algae can be refined to retieve the valuable oils, fats, proteins and vitamins, mainly consiting of Carbon. the rest is recycled in the digesters so NPK is avoided and very low net consumption of fossil minerals is required; again the key is in efficiency.

we coined the term greencirclefarming for this approach and I am confident we will see many developments in a 2nd green revolution that can contibute to a sustainble and significant replacement of fossil fuels. There are many overhyped expectations for algaefarming but there are some truths hidden in the hypes that make algae surely worth the attention.

You apparently don’t under stand that biofuels require a lot of petroleum energy products in their production – it’s the process of producing biofuels that adds the carbon, not the photosynthetic process of the algae or plants. You are correct CO2 is added by burning fossil fuels. Producing the fertilizers, chemicals, and energy to grow and process biofuels burns those fossil fuels and releases the additional CO2.

Arthur, The comment below was for Alex – it seems to come have out under yours.

I agree with the anaerobic digestion of organic wastes as being the most advantageous form of biofuel production environmentally. Regarding algae biofuel, I would take issue with regard to recycling biomass mass waste nutrients back into algae cultures. Not considering the negative aspects of extraneous organic debris (light blockage, fouling, bacterial and protozoal fertilization) in algae cultures, I have read a number of studies now that clearly show as well that much of the waste nutrients are not bio-available directly for recycling – especially phosphorus which highly bound. One study asserted that the biomass waste would have to acidified to make it bio-available again – in a process almost identical used to make phosphate fertilizer for NPK. Practically and economically this means it will be cheaper to add NPK to the culture than to recycle the wastes – especially at small scale.The feasibility of the idealized concept of just dumping biomass waste back into algae production system doesn’t seem to be supported at all in the scientific literature and certainly not economically.

That said, sewage/cafo wastes are the most obvious target for environmentally conscious biofuel production advocates – but NASA’s OMEGA project seems to be the only group that is serious about using waste consuming biofuels to help clean up the environment – including lowering CO2 levels. Most of the biofuel developers I’ve looked at (some 200 companies) have focused on developing NPK dependent technology.

Brazil produces ethanol using sugarcane. After the cane is harvested, the remaining plant material(bagasse) is dried and burned to produce electricity. Enough electricity is produced to run the mills and distilleries and even produces an excess that is fed into the national electrical grid. The ash from burning the bagasse is mixed with water sprayed back on the harvested fields—–ash makes excellent fertilizer. The machinery runs on biofuels, ethanol makes an excellent diesel fuel with the addition of a small amount of ignition enhancer—-ED95(95% ethanol diesel). Scania has been running fleets of over 1,000 buses in Sweden and UK for years on ED95—it is clean and efficient, and great for areas where pollution from petroleum burning is a problem.

Like the wastes from the plants, the algae can also be used as the biomass to produce various types of biofuels. One of the most popular types of biofuels, biodiesel, is obtained from the vegetable oil. The same biodiesel can also be obtained from algae oil. The biodiesel from algae can be mixed with the petroleum diesel and used for the running of the vehicles. It can also be used as the fuel for jets, airplanes, refineries, and pipelines. The biodiesel obtained from algae can be readily used with automobile and jet engines without the need to make any modifications in the engine. It meets all the specifications of the petroleum diesel fuel.

The algae biomass can also be used for making ethanol and butanol biofuels, which are type of alcohols. Butanol is considered to have more efficiency than ethanol and it is obtained from dried algae that act as a biomass. The carbohydrates extracted from algae are converted into natural sugars, which are then converted into butyric, lactic and acetic acids by the process of fermentation. Further fermentation of butyric acid is carried out to produce butanol.

The biomass obtained from algae can also be used to produce biogas that contains methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is an important component of natural gas, so this biogas can be used just like the natural gas for producing heating effect and also to produce electricity. CCRES ALGAE http://ccres-aquaponics.blogspot.com/2012/05/algae-conferences-and-exhibitions-in.html